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I really wish I could get the paper edition, but it was sold out. I got the digital version for $25 (pdf, epub and text), but... The book has tons of insets, photos, and graphics, and the epub, unfortunately, cannot keep up with it. CoolReader, my favorite epub viewer, does not break lines correctly in example text, and surrounds each inset with things like
g a m e e x c e r p t
which really makes reading a dismal experience. Text is largely useless as you really want to see the images. And it's really a zip folder full of files, so it's maybe good for research.
pdf looks good, but I it's really clunky in my reader. It's black on white and I no longer read that way (I have floaters which are very visible that way, I usually read green on black like a good hacker). I have to keep zooming in to make the text as full-screen as possible, and scroll around to see images. Kind of sucks.
I was told that the paper copy sucks too, as the binding hides many of the images that span two pages...
Which is too bad, because this is a really well researched book, and something I was really excited about.
I am just starting to read it, but it is a slog so far. I hope I will get more used to the epub version, or maybe find a pdf viewer which allows me to reverse the image (or with a proper night mode).
I was really looking forward to some inspiration, as I've been thinking about making some sort of a text game for gemini.
2023-08-16 · 6 weeks ago
I'm halfway through the book myself, reading the ePub version on an iPad. Compared to a Kobo, where the formatting is rather rudimentary, on iPad it at least looks passable.
It's an interesting book! Hopefully you find a device that can render it well enough.
On my workhorse with a decent monitor, I can actually enjoy it with
mupdf -I ...
That inverts the image colors... Then zooming to make the page fill half-screen... From there I can flip around the book nicely.
thank you for this post. i missed @ruby_witch 's post and now because of you i was able to get the book and take a look at it. it is indeed amazing.
2023-08-19 · 6 weeks ago
Glad you all seem to be enjoying the book! I read my copy on a Kindle through Amazon's epub uploader, and it managed to make most of the formatting pretty acceptable. There were a few very large two-page images that were basically illegible, but most of the game excerpts and things like that worked out well.
I have to say that yeah, trying to read 50 Years of Text-Based Games through Okular on my desktop makes it look like a mess, I'm glad I wasn't trying to go through a book as long as this with that kind of formatting.